Research focus

My research combines cultural and social contexts and histories of languages, the semiotics of linguistic practices, epistemes and ontologies of colonial linguistics, but also linguistic description. I have contributed widely to the analysis, description and documentation of registers and choices, and focus on African languages not as systems and discrete entities, but as social practice, ways of speaking and parts of flexible and complex repertoires. I’m particularly interested in epistemic language, local metalinguistic knowledges, indirect communication, meaningful noise and silence. More recently, I have developed a research interest in the field of Critical Heritage Studies, exploring what makes languages part of ’intangible heritage’, associates them with emotion, prestige, and symbolic wealth.

Education and professional career

1987–1994

Student of African Linguistics, Historical Anthropology, Archaeology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt upon Main, student of African Studies, Oriental Studies, Archaeology, Anthropology at the Gutenberg-University in Mainz; Master of Arts in Frankfurt, Thesis: Die Anlautpermutation in den westatlantischen Sprachen.

1995-1999

Research fellow at the German Research Society interdisciplinary joint research project 268 ‘Kulturentwicklung und Sprachgeschichte im Naturraum Westafrikanische Savanne’, University of Frankfurt, Prof. Dr. H. Jungraithmayr.

Storch, Anne. 2015. How the West Was Won: Ways of Making History in Hone (Jukun, Nigeria). In J. Adelberger & R. Leger (eds.), Language, History and Reconstructions. Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter 18. Cologne: Köppe.